Why Google’s ‘Sticker Voting’ Method Kills Innovation
3 Massive Problems with ‘Sticker Voting’ Popularized in Google’s ‘Design Sprint Kit’
It has been long-standing practice to perform ‘sticker voting’ as a way to omit concepts and ideas in the creative process. If you’re familiar with ‘user-centered’ design or design ‘sprints’, you’ve probably heard of — or practiced — sticker voting in the past. The problem is that sticker voting is actually detrimental to innovation. Why? Because confirmation bias and competition breeds discontent, sticker voting fosters our multitude of irrational tendencies, and it forces us to make critical business decisions much too quickly and unrigorously. These are just a few of the reasons why you should stop sticker voting immediately, and seek alternatives methods of validation, some mentioned later in this article.
What Is Sticker Voting?
Scenario: A group of people have a challenge, problem, or opportunity they want to solve or investigate. Everyone in the ‘team’ formulates solutions, usually in the form of sketches and diagrams. Now comes the next challenge…how do you decide what to actually develop? In comes sticker voting.
When sticker voting, it is common practice for each member of the ‘team’ to present their idea, then once everyone is finished, group members ‘vote’ by physically placing a sticker on the concept they feel is the ‘best’ (this can happen remotely as well). The standard methodology states that the concept with the most stickers ‘wins’, and is thus subsequently developed. It is essentially a democratic way to omit or validate ideas. After all, there’s nothing wrong with a democracy, right?
Problem 1
Confirmation Bias and Competition Breed Discontent
Ideas are sacred to us. They are a reflection of our knowledge, craft, and values. How many times have you heard someone refer to their idea or business as their ‘baby’. We go to war over ideas — and perform seemingly heinous acts over mere concepts. Now can you imagine what happens when you actually encourage ideas to clash?
The answer is that it breeds hostility. Sticker voting, by nature, is a competitive exercise because there are winners and losers involved. This creates friction within the group, leading to ideological gridlock, and an unwillingness to evaluate new information — a thickening of the skull if you will. In fact, ideas and beliefs are so mentally rigid that we have an actual term to describe the condition to which we protect them, confirmation bias. Here is a sourced definition from wikipedia:
Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. *A link to the series of studies performed proving the existence of confirmation bias can be found, here.
Now, knowing how rigid and limited humans’ mental framework actually is, do you think a hasty research, conceptualization, and evaluation session is of adequate rhetorical magnitude to change someone’s judgements and beliefs about the world? Do you think a couple sessions at your local church of scientology could sway your opinion on the meaning of life? Would you change your diet after reading a brief blog post highlighting the benefits of an alternative?
The answer to all these questions is a resounding, NO. As confirmation bias teaches us, most engaged group members will believe they are right, so when they are inevitably rejected by the group via sticker voting, it leads to feelings of disappointment, anger, and other negative emotions that come with loss and abandonment. The competitive element also promotes emotive, reactionary behaviour, as people are trying to either argue or defend their case. In this combative state of mind, individuals become offensive and/or defensive and are even less likely to evaluate new information. This is critical in the decision-making process, because you want to be as informed and objective as possible.
Dually detrimental, once members of the group realize that the voting system is flawed (which most do because of confirmation bias, and the fact that there must be losers), it leads to learned helplessness. Definition from wikipedia:
Learned helplessness is behavior typical of a human or an animal and occurs where the subject endures repeatedly painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it is unable to escape or avoid. After such experience, the organism often fails to learn or accept “escape” or “avoidance” in new situations where such behavior would likely be effective. In other words, the organism learned that it is helpless in situations where there is a presence of aversive stimuli, has accepted that it has lost control, and thus gives up trying.
In the case of sticker voting, the aversive stimuli is the rejection of the proper solution. Thus, after continuous losing, the all-knowing subject learns that the best idea often doesn’t get voted in, so they are less motivated to effortfully engage in the creative process. Why would they if it has no impact on the outcome?
Confirmation bias is the first glaring reason why you should stop sticker voting to omit concepts in the development workspace. Ego is alive and well, and sticker voting requires there to be many losers. This undoubtedly kills group morale, individual spirit, and hurts your ultimate goal of creating pleasurable, profitable services.
Problem 2
Social Dynamics & Irrational Tendencies
Humans are social creatures, who hold deep unconscious biases towards others they share space with. We know that through phenomenon such as; The Halo Effect, Risk Aversion, The Availability Heuristic, and Stockholme Syndrome, that humans think and behave in illogical, irrational ways. We judge books by their covers, and vote for leaders by their media exposure. It’s just the hard truth that people are really bad at making objective decisions, especially when past experience powerfully influences existing judgement.
One prime example of an irrational bias is known as the availability heuristic. From wikipedia:
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
The availability heuristic is another reason we should not trust ourselves to hastily vote-in ideas that are critical to business and customer experience. Daniel Kanheman (Nobel Prize winning psychologist) describes this effect as WYSIATI, which stands for What You See Is All There Is. Essentially, we use ‘known-knowns’ (already observed phenomenon) when making decisions, as opposed to seeking new information, or even considering the possibility of undiscovered information.
These cognitive biases are so prevalent in our thinking, there are over one-hundred different scientific terms used to describe them. Identifiable victim effect, IKEA effect, Illusion of control, Illusion of validity, Illusory correlation, Illusory truth effect, Impact bias, Information bias, Insensitivity to sample size, and Irrational escalation. Those are just the terms with the initial, ‘i’. Think about that. When we sticker vote (usually in a socially volatile setting), it allows us to exercise these seemingly limitless irrational tendencies, which is something we don’t want when making critical business decisions.
Another cognitive bias and glaring problem with sticker voting can be explained through the psycho-social phenomenon known as conformity, where people knowingly vote against their good judgement to conform to group thinking. The famous experiment, sourced from wikipedia:
Psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950’s setup a series of experiments studying if and how individuals yielded to or defied a majority group and the effect of such influences on beliefs and opinions. In one of the experiments, subjects were shown a reference line (actual vertical line with measurable length). Then, the experimenter showed another card with 3 lines of varying lengths, one of which had the exact length of the line from the previously shown card. They were then asked which line from the second card (A,B, or C) matched the reference line. When individuals were given this task alone, the error rate was less than 1% — their judgements were accurate. The real experiment begins when an individual performed this task in a group of ‘actors). In essence, the same perceptual task was performed but everyone was sitting side-by-side, and were asked to verbally express which line was the right match. It was the actor’s responsibility in the experiment to choose the incorrect answer, to see if this influence would sway the experimentee’s decision. The results were that it did. Overall, the accuracy went from over 99% correct, to roughly 70% correct when exposed to the experimental group.
I’ve actually witnessed the conformity bias, most notably the first time ever sticker voting. What happens is, due to the lack of evaluation time and social pressure, members end up voting for the concept or feature that currently holds the most votes. This means that early votes are critical (and more valuable), because they inform the following majority. When someone is unsure of what to pick, or they feel social pressure due to the awkwardness of the event — they often end up defaulting with the majority.
This is especially true when voting isn’t anonymous, and the problem at hand is more complex. For example, in the Asch Experiment, the reference lines were quite obviously different length — it was a simple binary task. Now imagine the complexity of assessing a concept affected by a multitude of psycho/social/techno/enviro/political factors. It isn’t as cut and dry as the simple line test. This leads to uncertainty, increasing the likelihood of conformity. This compliant behaviour also positively correlates with group size, because more variables means a harder decision.
Another bias we exercise when sticker voting is known as the halo effect, where humans have the tendency to attribute positive qualities (such as intelligence) to things, companies, or people we like (or are attracted to). It’s just human nature to like some more than others — often for peculiar, unconscious reasons. Now with sticker voting, add a history of social interactions to these already subjectives biases. Can you see the problem here? Would you not likely vote for someone because you like them (for external reasons not pertaining to business), or because they have power, rather than choosing the actual ‘best’ concept? Power dynamics and social factors play a huge role in decision-making — and all of them harm our goal of discovering and adding the most value to a product or service using the least amount of resources.
Problem 3
Great Ideas Intersect & Need Time
Ideas are mysterious. They seemingly come out of nowhere, in the strangest places. Steven Johnson (science author), made a highly publicized TED talk on the romanticism of the idea as an ‘aha moment’ thing, however he soundly argues that ideas are actually growing networks of various concepts shaped through technology, discourse, and cultural values. The crux of his keynote is that great ideas need lengthly incubation periods, and that ideas often linger for decades before they become fully realized. Johnson expounds, citing how profound thinkers like Darwin, Newton, and Einstein described their theories as having a ‘eureka’ moment event, even though it was apparent they had been developing their concept for years leading up to that moment of realization.
Moreover, ideas intersect, clash, and evolve over time, despite popular belief that they arise out of thin air. It would be foolish to believe that a great idea comes from one person, in one office, in one session, as ‘sprinting’ and sticker voting assumes. That is ludicrous.
Now, I’m not proposing you linger on your business or UX problems for years before executing, but you must understand how critical early decisions are in the creative phases of a project, in order to plan properly. The gravity of this early stage planning is supported by the economic concept known as path dependency. From investopedia.com:
Path dependency is an idea that tries to explain the continued use of a product or practice based on historical preference or use. This holds true even if newer, more efficient products or practices are available due to the previous commitment made. Path dependency occurs because it is often easier or more cost effective to simply continue along an already set path than to create an entirely new one.
Path dependency implies quite accurately that early stage decisions are critical, because subsequent changes with time will be exponentially more challenging, if not impossible to make. For this reason, when designing a business/product/service (all interchangeable terms), it’s better to begin with the end in mind. Try to understand the core value of what you can provide, along with the multitude of factors and trends affecting your industry, prior to ‘marrying’ anything. Start functional, and be wise. Do not rush development in the early stages. Stop sprinting, and start planning.
Furthermore, since we know that ideas are actually networks of other concepts, things, and factors — more effort should be put into amalgamating the strengths and eliminating the weaknesses of all concepts, rather than just choosing one concept to move forward with. When sticker voting, you are essentially depriving yourself of the potential value of the unchosen concepts. In light of this holistic review method, when solving a problem it is always better to understand the whole system rather than a single component, and sticker voting forces us to choose one solution of many. It is this value for ‘oneness’ that we want to avoid when understanding the business, product, or world at large. There is rarely a single cause for anything.
Summary
Sticker voting is a flawed creative method because confirmation bias and competition breed discontent, it allows us to exercise our many cognitive biases, and it isn’t contextually optimal for creativity and objective evaluation. We also know that sticker voting and ‘sprinting’ forces people to make critical business decisions much too quickly, and unrigorously. The detrimental effect of sticker voting exponentially increases with business size — because decisions have more impact as you scale up. Revamping a whole online store, checkout process, and customer experience requires intelligent planning, not fast sprints relegated to a quick sticker voting session. Moreover, because of humans’ irrational tendencies, there needs to be more rigour in the evaluation process.
Sticker voting is an honest attempt at a truly difficult problem. Decision-making is a challenging process, especially when there are so many factors involved in product and service design. Before I offer alternative solutions to sticker voting, one must understand that each project is unique, and each project requires its own methods. For example, when conceptualizing a product that has no users, its truly impossible to perform a rigorous AB task flow test, thus that method is completely off the table. This is another reason why adhering to a rigid sprint methodology is harmful, because it assumes a similar structure for all projects. Each project is unique, and you must understand there is no perfect methodology to subscribe to, but there are values to design by.
EndNote
Due to the length of this article, and its critical nature, I will post a subsequent article that details alternative methods and values to adhere to when designing and crafting a product or service. Some of these suggestions and methods include; having less designers, forcing thoughtful evaluation and rationale (in written format), recruiting external experts for review (double-blind), ‘SWOT’ing and reiterating predevelopment, rigorous AB testing using thoughtful metrics (proper conversion and rating tests), conducting audience experiments, automating feedback, testing with adequate sample size, and properly using the internet as a powerful resource for scientific literature review.
I design everything. Contact jeffdavidsondesign@gmail.com for work inquiries. Subscribe on my site for free design and business material.
